Clearly I need an edi­tor. I skipped a cru­cial ingre­di­ent (toma­toes) and a cru­cial step (slic­ing), which I’ve now added to my recipe for you here. Sorry!

It’s get­ting closer! Our visit home. We’ve con­firmed some more excit­ing plans: lunch in upstate New York with John’s for­mer assis­tant (and our per­ma­nent friend) Olimpia and her hus­band Tony. They have just built on an amaz­ing new kitchen to their coun­try place up in the moun­tains, from which Olimpia promises will issue… her famous meat­balls. I can­not wait. And lunch with Alyssa at a new place in Tribeca, the Devin Tav­ern. Rus­tic Amer­i­can? That’s what we’re com­ing home for.

And we’re stay­ing in town at a lit­tle cozy-sounding place, The Union Square Inn. It gets hugely dis­parate reviews, and I hope it’s decent, since it was my idea and John always likes bet­ter the sound of a place high in the sky, not low to the ground in the East Vil­lage. Any­way we’ll be there only to sleep, so what’s the prob­lem. I don’t think I have ever stayed in a New York hotel in the whole of my life. That’s what hap­pens when you live in a place; you don’t see the hotels. Unless, that is, you live the kind of life where you do things in hotels in the town where you live, and alas… no. Sigh.

And in our uber-organised mode lately, John had the bright idea for me to renew my pass­port before we try to attach all sorts of legal immi­gra­tion things to it, so we skid­ded over the two steps it takes to get to the Amer­i­can Embassy from our flat. Boy is that a weird place. Granted it’s mind-bendingly ugly. I accept that. But I don’t think I’ve ever been that close to a gun before, and they’re all tot­ing them, just like in Amer­i­can gang­ster films. Only not revolvers, but big long things with lots of han­dles. The demeanor of the chaps in the secu­rity hut is sur­pris­ingly joc­u­lar, con­sid­er­ing their brief, but I guess you get used to any­thing. I had a lit­tle drop­per bot­tle of what John calls “happy juice,” a flo­ral relax­ation rem­edy (I know, I sound like a crack­pot) in my bag, and let me tell you, the intense secu­rity and height­ened state of alert in Grosvenor Square was alive to the pos­si­bil­i­ties of this poten­tial breach of safety. The lit­tle bot­tle was scru­ti­nized under the x-ray and then I was made to reach per­ilously into the bag myself (they weren’t tak­ing any risks with their own secu­rity, absolutely not), and hand it over, where­upon I was about to be given a claim ticket for it and watch it get installed cer­e­mo­ni­ously in a locker. “Don’t be silly, it’s almost empty, you can pitch it,” I said gen­er­ously, and went in the building.

After­wards I had a good spy-ish, plot-like thought (this is what comes of tak­ing too many writ­ing courses). What if, upon their find­ing my lit­tle bot­tle, I had made a fuss? Told them I had to take two droppers-ful every half hour or else drop dead? Or what if, even more sin­is­ter, I had given them back the bot­tle and then said that, on sec­ond thoughts, I didn’t need to renew my pass­port that day, and had left? Would that have been ter­ri­bly sus­pi­cious? John of course sug­gested that I should have said, “Oh keep it, I can always get more. It’s just Polo­nium 210.” I won­der if they would sic dogs on me? Life in Lon­don can be a lit­tle strange these days, espe­cially in my neighborhood.

Any­way, the sweet embassy man behind Win­dow #1 assured me that I should keep this pass­port as I could get only a year-long one on an emer­gency basis, fewer than 10 days before trav­el­ing, so I can look for­ward to vis­it­ing the embassy again when we return, and in the mean­time I can run through some poten­tial dia­logue sce­nar­ios, smug­gling this, smug­gling that. I’m accept­ing scripts, if you’d like to apply.

Well, I can tell you that as a per­son for whom the sound of chil­dren singing is an instant tear-producer, yes­ter­day was quite Over the Top, AND I had no tis­sue, what was I think­ing. Our school had been invited to take part in the third annual fundrais­ing con­cert at the Royal Acad­emy of Music, an impos­ing struc­ture in the Maryle­bone Road, in aid of a char­ity called The Children’s Trust for Mul­ti­ple Dis­abil­i­ties. I am sappy enough when it comes to happy news and healthy chil­dren, so add the per­spec­tive of chil­dren who have been through life-threatening dis­abil­i­ties, and I am the orig­i­nal bas­ket case. But it was lovely. And a more deserv­ing char­ity I can­not imagine.

The scene was this: per­haps a dozen schools from around Lon­don had been invited to par­tic­i­pate in the con­cert, for which tick­ets were sold in aid of the char­ity. So we dis­persed the Ava+Anna sleep­over party of the night before; and I do mean night, they were up until all hours, putting on a play in which Avery was the hoity-toity older sis­ter of a Vic­to­rian fam­ily whose par­ents had unac­count­ably dis­ap­peared, leav­ing her in charge. I must say, the cos­tumes were lovely, hav­ing been culled from all Avery’s pre-uniform obses­sion with old-fashioned gar­ments. Those bits, and a cou­ple of for­mal skirts that have migrated from my closet (worn once, at Glyn­de­bourne, in per­haps ten years) com­pleted the look. Any­way, we packed Avery off to the Royal Acad­emy with her “immac­u­late win­ter uni­form” as spec­i­fied by Mrs D and a lunch, and we our­selves turned up in the after­noon for a pre-concert cham­pagne recep­tion fea­tur­ing excel­lent gos­sip with other par­ents and pos­si­bly the worst canapes I have ever come across, but hey, it was for char­ity. There was chicken on skew­ers accom­pa­nied by a vat of what was clearly may­on­naise for, dare I say it, dip­ping? And sim­ply awful soggy bli­nis with not-fresh smoked salmon, need I say more. Maybe I can cater it next year.

Any­way, we trooped upstairs and ended up in the bal­cony for photography’s sake. Just look at these faces. So bored! And the pos­ture. The boys above our group were just clas­sic. It is hard to imag­ine, look­ing at ado­les­cent chaps like these, that our girls will ever find, among them, fod­der for romance, but then they’ll be ado­les­cents too, so per­haps it evens out. I can’t see the gor­geous being that was my hus­band at 18, any­where in these boys, just a cou­ple of years younger. But I sup­pose I was drink­ing the kool-aid. In any case, it was a won­der­ful, won­der­ful after­noon. I do find the sight of so many earnest, dressed-up chil­dren and their devoted men­tors incred­i­bly sen­ti­men­tal. How hard they have worked! The Latin, the French, the pianis­si­mos and vibratos, the girls’ uni­forms with knee socks at vary­ing lev­els of knee-proximity, the boys with any num­ber of cuff lengths to their ever-expanding arms, the slump­ing poses, but then the ethe­real beauty of their voices. Our school did very well, but I have to say that the schools who obvi­ously sac­ri­fice a great deal for their music were a rev­e­la­tion. Ful­ham Prep, for exam­ple, have won all sorts of com­pe­ti­tions, and it showed. The pro­fes­sion­al­ism and matu­rity of their per­for­mance was incred­i­ble, plus I am a com­plete sucker for the sound of 20 voices simul­ta­ne­ously pro­nounc­ing the Eng­lish ver­sion of “water”. I sat there try­ing to think how to spell it, and it’s some­thing like “whoa-tuh.” So pure and gorgeous.

And then a teenage boy got up and read what amounted to his life story: a little-boyhood of being the fastest and the best in his class at every­thing, then a tragic auto acci­dent, and bang: all over. Or so the doc­tors said, until he reached The Children’s Trust and was taken in hand by every sort of ther­a­pist you can imag­ine, and despite all the ter­ri­ble pre­dic­tions, in a year had learnt to walk, talk, feed him­self, all over again. He is plan­ning to run the Lon­don Marathon next year. Toward the end he could not fin­ish read­ing, and when he sat down there was a moment of stunned silence and then the room sim­ply erupted in applause, and a stand­ing ova­tion. John and I are try­ing to think how we could vol­un­teer for a place like The Children’s Trust, which is located too far out of Lon­don to be prac­ti­cal. But I feel sure there must be some­thing like it here in the city, where Avery and I could per­haps read aloud to chil­dren, or help in the kitchens, and John could lend a hand with their com­puter sys­tems. We must find something.

All the par­ents, milling about after the con­cert, were over­whelmed. “Sort of puts trou­ble with home­work in per­spec­tive, doesn’t it?” Becky mused. “If I ever start com­plain­ing about any­thing, just kick me,” I agreed. Our chil­dren finally emerged from the throng, and I have never seen Avery so tired. We spir­ited her home and into her sec­ond bath of the day, which she swam about in for about two hours, com­ing out only to swal­low about two bites of din­ner and then lay her head on the table. “Time for bed,” I announced. “But my home­work!” she wailed. “You can tell your teach­ers that your mother made you go to bed, and they can take the mat­ter up with me.” Wrapped in a fuzzy throw with about four hot water bot­tles and a tabby cat, she was good for a chap­ter of “All of a Kind Fam­ily,” and then was down for the count, at about 7:30! Like hav­ing a baby in the house. I had for­got­ten, until I was look­ing for a com­fort book, how won­der­ful “All of a Kind Fam­ily” is. It was her absolute sta­ple read-aloud as per­haps a kinder­gart­ner, and I remem­ber clearly that I had just been anx­ious about why she wasn’t read­ing, some­where around age 5, when I heard her lit­tle voice and real­ized she was read­ing full para­graphs of that book, to her­self. Avery’s way: learn in secret, emerge only when you know how. But get the book (here’s a link for get­ting them in the UK even, that’s how much I care about your read­ing list), do, and then get the sequels. A lovely story of five sis­ters grow­ing up in the Jew­ish ghetto of the Lower East Side of Man­hat­tan, in the 1920s. It’s all there: sis­terly affec­tion of a Jane Austen sort, thrift, Jew­ish her­itage and cul­ture (plus mouth-watering descrip­tions of the food mar­kets). You’ll love them. Plus it’s good to get back to read­ing aloud, I think. Just because she can read, doesn’t mean she always has to.

Let’s see, what else is going on? Oh! The Indi­anapo­lis Colts won the Super Bowl! My fam­ily back home are ecsta­tic, my par­ents and brother actu­ally still liv­ing there and my sis­ter and her fam­ily pre­tend­ing they weren’t in Con­necti­cut at all, last night dur­ing the big tri­umph. Con­grat­u­la­tions, every­one. Good on you, Colts.

Back on this side of the pond, we’re mak­ing fran­tic plans for our half-term trip back to Con­necti­cut, on Fri­day. There is so much to fit in. Must see Alyssa and her fam­ily, Avery’s going to spend a day with Cici at her school (only if she speaks in an Eng­lish accent ALL DAY, John spec­i­fies), must get our immi­gra­tion papers at the British Con­sulate, must see my fam­ily who are com­ing to visit, must con­grat­u­late Jane in per­son on being two, and see Rol­lie and Judy and the new goat kids, and Anne and David across the road, and of course Avery must be reunited with her sta­ble friends and her beloved Lady­bug, for a nice one-off ride on Tues­day. As soon as they found out we were com­ing (guess how? I madly emailed every­one instantly), the barn moth­ers organ­ised a din­ner out at a report­edly fab­u­lous Ital­ian place: one table for the par­ents, and one for the girls. I can’t wait. And some shop­ping, too, prob­a­bly, since the exchange rate is sim­ply hor­rific right now and we can­not buy any­thing here. It should be a great week, cold and frosty with our fires well-stoked and old friends nearby.

Then, believe it or not, we’re plan­ning a pos­si­ble trip to Morocco for our friend Vin­cent’s birth­day, in April. That sound awfully exotic for me, but why not? I think it’s dur­ing Avery’s Easter break (do these schools do noth­ing but break up? it often feels that way). It cer­tainly would be, as John points out, the way to do Morocco, since Vincent’s father was a diplo­mat there in the 1970s, and we could find out a lot more with him than we ever would on our own. Some­thing to think about!

But in the mean­time, closer to home, let me give you a recipe for a truly com­fort­ing dish in case you have a cold night and three hun­gry lit­tle girls in your house. Or even two. Or just your­self. In fact, it’s com­pletely flex­i­ble, as few recipes are, in that you can make a lit­tle or a lot. This recipe was espe­cially hard to write down, as I just made it up along pretty clas­sic lines and accord­ing to what I had in my pantry, since all I bought fresh was the beef itself. And cru­cially: it’s not only per­fect as left­overs, the entire dish should be eaten ONLY on the sec­ond day. Alyssa has long told me this and I didn’t believe her. On the first night, it’s good, but it’s a bit tough, because after all, it’s about the cheap­est thing you can buy that’s still part of a cow. On the sec­ond night, it’s ambrosial.

Clas­sic Brisket
(this amount serves six)

4 tbsps oil (any­thing light-flavored)
2 lbs brisket (in Lon­don it is called “top­side”)
5 cups beef stock
2 soup-size cans toma­toes (either whole or chopped, as you like)
6 car­rots, sliced
1 dozen pearl onions, peeled
6 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 cup red wine
4 bay leaves
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, chopped
sev­eral grinds fresh black pep­per
salt to taste

In a heavy, large saucepan, heat the oil and put in the beef. Siz­zle for two min­utes then turn and siz­zle on the other side. Add the gar­lic to the oil on either side of the beef and saute briefly: do not burn!. Pour over the beef stock and toma­toes, and toss the veg­eta­bles, wine and sea­son­ings in. Stir and cover tightly. Sim­mer high for at least 2 hours, lift­ing the lid occa­sion­ally to stir the mix­ture and turn the beef. When ten­der, turn the beef onto a cut­ting board and slice short-wise in slices about 1/3 inch thick. Then replace in the suce, and ide­ally, cool with the lid off and leave over night, tightly cov­ered once cool. You can, of course, eat it right away, but it’s bet­ter hav­ing rested overnight. Serve the next evening, with noo­dles, rice or mashed pota­toes, and a nice coleslaw of my own design:

Red Cab­bage and Fen­nel Slaw with Tar­ragon Dress­ing
(make how­ever much you like!)

red cab­bage and fen­nel bulbs, in equal pro­por­tion, sliced thin
red onion, sliced thin
bot­tled Russ­ian dress­ing
fresh tar­ragon leaves, chopped
fresh-squeezed lemon juice
salt and pepper

Com­bine all dress­ing ingre­di­ents thor­oughly and toss with cab­bage and fen­nel. The crunch and spice is per­fect with brisket. Heaven.

Think­ing about two years ago today, get­ting a call in our New York apart­ment, a snowy day, just at wakeup time, and it was Uncle Joel, telling us our niece had been born: Miss Jane Grove, no mid­dle name as all Fred­er­ick­son women are. It was but the work of a moment for Avery and me to pack our­selves up, drive up to Cheshire, Con­necti­cut (I don’t think we got lost more than three times) and be in time to hold baby Jane, just eight hours old, and see Jill, look­ing radi­ant and beau­ti­ful, and Joel already behav­ing like the author­i­ta­tive and lov­ing dad he is. How tiny she was, just stretch­ing out the length of my thigh as I sat down, and how ador­ing her cousin Avery was, and is. We miss you and love you: see you in just a week!

It was one of those after­noons and evenings that make me realise how spoilt we all are: a warm home to come to, the three of us to pitch in and help each other out, and noth­ing real to com­plain about, just a gen­eral feel­ing of malaise this par­tic­u­lar Thurs­day evening. What I’ve come to rec­og­nize as the “Thurs­day evening syn­drome.” Every­one is still sur­rounded by the respon­si­bil­i­ties and pres­sures of the week, but there’s one more cru­cial day to get through before we can col­lapse. We moved it up a day last night and all just sort of col­lapsed last evening.

I had an excel­lent com­edy class and walked from Covent Gar­den to the park to see if Avery was rid­ing in the ring where I could see her, or around the Mile where I couldn’t. The sky was just turn­ing dusky blue with air­plane trails criss­cross­ing, and as I put one foot in front of the other, I could feel some­thing shut­ting down. I can con­clude only that I got a stom­ach bug in my lunch on the way to class. It was a chore to get to the ring, and there they were rid­ing with all their might, Bill giv­ing Avery all sorts of trou­ble and as a result she was being sep­a­rated from the group and made to work madly on some skill that wasn’t going well. By the end of the les­son, and all the horses and rid­ers were troop­ing across the Bayswa­ter Road, she looked like she’d been pulled through the eye of a nee­dle. I lis­tened to the clip-clop of the ponies’ shoes in the mews on the way to the sta­ble and it sounded melan­choly! Don’t know why.

We met up with Becky and she kindly gave us a ride home, and for a moment I wanted to be one of Becky’s chil­dren, go home with her and be taken care of. Alas, I checked with myself and sure enough, I was still the mother, and wife, so we came in to dark­ness, because John was out. “I have loads of home­work to do, Mummy, so I’ll get started right away,” Avery promised, only we dis­cov­ered that her back­pack was in the car, with John. Minor panic. “Let’s just switch around bath­time with home­work time,” I sug­gested, but “No, when will we have din­ner? I can’t get my home­work wet, you know, and…” And of course we had been plan­ning to run get a pizza and try La Car­i­catura again, but the thought of leav­ing the house, shiv­er­ing to the restau­rant and wait­ing politely for things to hap­pen on some­one else’s sched­ule seemed the bridge too far. “We’ll get pizza to bring home,” I decided, but sud­denly my stom­ach was not coop­er­at­ing. Got Avery into her bath and lay down with a hot water bot­tle, and then John appeared say­ing he didn’t feel par­tic­u­larly well either, and did I think he had a fever?

John decided that he needed to think about his work party the night before, and admit that maybe every­thing isn’t all cheery all the time. I don’t think it’s a good idea to give the impres­sion to a child that cop­ing and being cheer­ful has to be a 24-hour-a-day, seven days a week atti­tude. Every once in awhile you can say, “That sucked,” and move on. He was so brave, I thought, to go to the party, and it’s all right to admit it. Plus he’s spent all week prepar­ing num­bers to make an offer on a house, and then he did, and the estate agent has not responded, which totally freaks him out. “I can’t tell if it would be good news if they accepted the offer, or the most scary thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he admitted.

And Avery, I don’t know how she does it. Day after day of such stren­u­ous school work, and play audi­tions, and vio­lin lessons, and strug­gles with the Eng­lish teacher and her impos­si­ble standards,and Latin to mem­o­rize, only to spend after-school time in the cold fight­ing with a two-ton ani­mal, and then more work at home. I keep think­ing she’ll crack, and lie down on the floor with her feet kick­ing. But she doesn’t.

So bath, home­work, for­get­table pizza. Why do I think it’s a crime to skip din­ner, even if I don’t feel well, AND I didn’t cook it? No idea. We tucked Avery up with mul­ti­ple hot water bot­tles, and all sort of just… opted out. I decided a good slug of Alka-Seltzer couldn’t hurt, and we set­tled down to “The Daily Show With Jon Stew­art,” and his guest was the chief astro­physi­cist at the Rose Sci­ence Cen­ter, at the Nat­ural His­tory Museum in New York! Who hap­pened to be a dad from good old PS 234, Neil de Grasse Tyson. I remem­ber that his daugh­ter in Avery’s class used to say, “My dad knows about stars.”

A truly larger than life fig­ure, immensely knowl­edge­able, totally full of him­self, with a never-exhausted desire to explain it all, to every­one. I remem­ber one school potluck din­ner at our apart­ment where Neil ended up with a pil­low from my bed­room to explain some­thing, and he him­self stand­ing on the kitchen counter, and using his waist­coat embroi­dered with stars and plan­ets to illus­trated yet another point. “We astro­physi­cists tell it like it is,” he would boast. “Spots on the sun? We call them ‘sunspots.’ A big hole that’s utterly, end­lessly black? ‘Black hole.’” He has a new book out, that would be incred­i­bly depress­ing if it weren’t so incom­pre­hen­si­bly true. It was such fun to watch and lis­ten, and remem­ber back when the girls were so lit­tle, kinder­garten, in another city, another school, another life.

I’ll try to get a pho­to­graph this week­end of Avery’s new hair­cut: noth­ing dras­tic, just a good trim. Then it’s a school birth­day party, and a con­cert Sun­day. We’re on the mend.

Isn’t this an incred­i­bly evoca­tive pho­to­graph of an ordi­nary red bell pep­per? I didn’t take it, so I can wax lyri­cal about the qual­ity. I ended up spend­ing quite a bit of time brows­ing through the photographer’s web­site, and you should give it a try too. Plus to a non-speaker of the lan­guage, there’s some­thing very amus­ing about people’s com­ments in Swedish!

Last night I was so not in the mood to cook din­ner: tired for no good rea­son, John was out at a busi­ness din­ner (don’t get too excited: it was the good­bye din­ner for his for­mer boss, whose retire­ment was meant to give John the job that The Other Guy got which resulted in the lat­est install­ment of Ser­ial Job Quit­ting). Plus after a nice snack at Patis­serie Valerie with Becky and Anna, Avery decided she could not live with the cur­rent home­work organ­iser file in her back­pack, so we braved the crowds, the over­whelm­ing per­fume, and gen­eral off-putting com­mer­cial­ism that is Sel­f­ridges, perus­ing their sta­tionery depart­ment. Not my favorite way to spend the after­noon. So I had visions of tak­ing Avery to some local pizza joint and relax­ing. But bless her heart, she said, “Could you make that spinach and red pep­per pasta I like so much?” and when I hes­i­tated she wailed, “You should be glad I love your cook­ing! And it’s a child, ask­ing for spinach!” I relented. And it is so extremely deli­cious, plus per­fectly good for you too. A bit of labor in chop­ping, but think of it as your moment of zen.

Far­falle with Spinach and Roasted Red Pep­per
(serves four)

1 pound far­falle (I pre­fer De Cecco)
3 tbsps olive oil
3 large red bell pep­pers
1/2 pound baby spinach leaves, washed
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
1 red onion, finely chopped
1 hand­ful flat pars­ley, chopped
1 1/2 tbsps Ital­ian sea­son­ing
2 soup-size cans peeled plum toma­toes, drained and quar­tered
sprin­kling chilli flakes
1 tsp salt
grated pecorino or parme­san cheese

Put water on to boil for pasta and pre­heat your oven to broil. Line a cookie sheet with alu­minium foil (for easy cleanup) and cut your pep­per down the sides in three slices, tak­ing care to dis­card seeds. Press the slices as flat as they can get, skin side up, onto the cookie sheet and place under broiler. While you keep an eye on them as they roast, start chop­ping the gar­lic and onion and throw them in a skil­let or wok, with the olive oil; toss in the Ital­ian sea­son­ing. It can all wait in the cold skil­let while you get the spinach and pars­ley chopped. The cut you want with your spinach is called a “chif­fon­ade,” which in French means lit­er­ally “made into a rag,” and you get it by pil­ing the leaves (stems removed) on top of each other and slic­ing them into rib­bons. This is an extremely sat­is­fy­ing job for your basic OCD per­son, or a slightly bipo­lar per­son who is hav­ing a down day. I speak as an author­ity on both these diagnoses.

When the pep­pers’ skins are nicely wrin­kled and slightly black­ened, take them off the sheet with tongs and place either in a brown paper bag, or on a paper towel that is large enough to wrap around them. Make the lit­tle pack­age as air­tight as you can. After a minute or so, unwrap and you should be able to peel the skins off the pep­pers and dis­card them. Then slice the pep­pers into bite-size pieces and put aside with the toma­toes. I know I am, if not alone, unusual in dis­lik­ing commercially-roasted red pep­pers. It’s because they are pre­served gen­er­ally in oil or vine­gar, and the oil makes them slimy to my mind, and I don’t do slimy. At all. And the vine­gar adds quite an unnec­es­sary bite to them. I sup­pose I could rinse them. But why? It’s easy to roast pep­pers, and if I had a gas flame I could hold them in tongs and turn them around until done, also a nice zen task. But if you like slimy, hats off to you and this dish is a bit easier.

Once your pep­pers and spinach and pars­ley are chopped, put your pasta in the boil­ing water and you’ve got 11 min­utes to make your sauce. Turn on the heat under the onion and gar­lic and saute until soft, then add the toma­toes and give it a stir. Add the salt and chillis and check your pasta. When it is just nearly ten­der, throw your spinach and pars­ley into the sauce and stir through. Pour your pasta through a colan­der in the sink and then, with­out giv­ing it the shake you nor­mally would, throw it in the skil­let with the sauce. This leaves a lit­tle bit of cook­ing water to moisten the sauce. Serve with the grated cheese, lots of it. Last night we analysed why the dish needs so much cheese, and came to the con­clu­sion that it is made up of very sim­ple fla­vors, and no fat to speak of, so the cheese adds depth.

I can­not explain it, but my child adores this dish. She spears each lit­tle bowtie and then scoops all the veg­etable bits off the plate with rel­ish. We both agree that it isn’t quite as pretty as you would think, when you pic­ture red and green, and if any­one has sug­ges­tions on how it could be made pret­tier, I’d wel­come them.

It’s one of those days in Lon­don where the sky is hang­ing low and heavy, and the weather peo­ple say dreary things like, “The day will progress with occa­sional rain­show­ers, patches of grey, and per­haps the odd bright spell, but with increas­ing cloud through­out the after­noon.” A typ­i­cal Lon­don day, in fact, which could use a good dose of com­edy class to wake it up…